Crash to desktop on 2nd last turn of GOTM 5

[acg]

I posted about this issue in the final spoiler thread, but AlanH somewhat cryptically indicated that I was posting in the wrong place (i think...).

Anyway, I played the latest GOTM going for a late-game conquest win, averting domination 1 turn before Paris's borders expanded by undergoing a revolution and thus delaying expansion by 3 turns. With 2 turns of anarchy left, I gathered large stacks of cossacks around the last 2 aztec cities, setting up my conquest on the next turn (barring any miraculous defence.. in any case I would take them the turn after, or win by domination 1 turn after anarchy). A problem arises however when I end this turn: the aztecs send a catapult out against one of my stacks of cossacks, the catapult withdraws from combat, and I crash to desktop. Reloading that turn or a few turns prior and replaying all my moves the same way always yields the same results. Is my GOTM submission worthless at this point? I'm a long time player but first time submitter (or would be without this problem) of the GOTMs. I'd like to finally get one in, especially since this is one of the few that I've seen through to the last turn(s). Are there any tricks to make a save game not crash?

 

[DaveMcW]

The GOTM support address is gotm@civfanatics.net

If you consistently crash when you reload and repeat your moves, I would try reloading and using different moves.

 

[ewokimpi]

The technical support forum is at this URL: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=159
You could try posting your issue there.

I found that updating the video driver to absolutely the latest version (e.g. for NVidia based card 6800GT, the current version is 84.21) is very helpful. Also, the fixes to DirectX found here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.mspx
cured some of the problems my machine was having back on patch v1_09.

In general, Civ IV runs better (better = no crashes) with at least 1G ram and a video card with 256mb memory.

It is suspicious that the game always crashes at the same point. I'm wondering if some incorrect data has been stored in the save file you are reloading from. Maybe a hardware error affected the save file? It might be worth verifying your hardware with these two programs: Prime95 found here: http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
and Memtest86+ found here: http://www.memtest.org/

Good luck and keep playing!

 

[ainwood]

The GOTM support address is gotm@civfanatics.net

If you consistently crash when you reload and repeat your moves, I would try reloading and using different moves.

Yep - and I haven't seen an e-mail as of yet.

 

[acg]

Thanks for the suggestions guys.. it looks like one of my sticks of RAM has gone bad. That would explain the unusually high number of crashes I experienced throughout this game. I'm just gonna skip submitting this one, get some new RAM and try again for next month's. My game wouldn't be challenging for any top scores anyway . Thanks again!